3 i6 THE LAND OF THE LION 



in its beautiful hidden woodlands you can always hear 

 in the early morning the strange cry of the Colobus monkey 

 sounding like a rapidly ground coffee mill. 



I spent many a delightful hour exploring its banks and 

 watching its delicious flow, so clear of all mud and swamp 

 stain. The tree ferns love its cool shade. Many varieties 

 unknown to me grew there. Little delicate fronded 

 things like long branches of parsley. Clumps of maiden- 

 hair, and others with rich hanging, curling leaves. Some 

 on the bank, some from great tree stems. You may 

 ride within one hundred yards of that canon's edge on 

 smoothly cropped green grass land, and but for the broad 

 tree-tops, just raising themselves above the level sward 

 you could have no idea that a gorge fully a hundred feet 

 deep lay at your feet. 



Then as you walk for miles along its edge, you can 

 study leisurely that new, strange world of the trees that 

 you have so often longed to look into. 



The heavy forests of Africa are usually dark, dank, 

 unhealthy. The wild pig and an occasional bushbuck 

 are the only animals that haunt them. But this upper 

 world of the tree-tops is full of life. There, monkeys 

 swing from bough to bough with extraordinary quickness. 

 Parrots screech to their fellows, and the purple pigeons 

 fly to and fro. All is above and beyond you as you walk 

 in semi-darkness, or rather crawl, torn, scratched at every 

 step. From the canon's crest you have a clear view of 

 what you never saw before, the world where the insects, 

 the birds, the monkeys find a safe and sunny home, a region 

 different as fancy can paint it from the sombre tangle below. 



Besides, the little river in cutting its way so deeply has 

 made a well-watered botanical garden all its own. There, 

 great trees grow and sweet flowers bloom that are strangers 

 to the country around. Here is the stateliest tree in 

 East Africa, the juniper, whose great stem rises majestically 



